The first picture isn't bad in the way of composition, imo, but yeah dude, waaaay too much post production. All you really need to do with it is adjust the levels and you'll have a half decent picture.

Haha! Nice. These are my examples of bad pp and wanted to see what kind of reactions people would have. I wonder what it is about the halo that people just don't like. About the OOF, I am really starting to not like the lens on this camera. I'll post the originals to this thread later at some point.